http://mmajunkie.comGerald Harris isn’t sure he wants to let this out there. After all, by calling attention to it, he may just invite more into his life.

He’s talking about haters. The haters that seem to follow him wherever an anonymous screen name is to be found.

If you haven’t been paying attention – or train UFC rather than MMA – Harris (19-4) notched a significant victory a couple of weekends ago. In a closely contested fight, he bested PRIDE and UFC vet Kazuhiro Nakamura (15-11) by split decision at DREAM.17.

You’d think Harris would get a few characters of encouragement on Twitter or on the message boards. He did, but he also got more than a few folks who were less than impressed by his win. In fact, some were downright derisive.

“As for our sport, there’s nothing I can say to change anybody’s mind, and I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind,” Harris told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “They whine a lot. It’s like they want Bonnar (vs.) Griffin every fight, and I think a lot of them are losing the educational sport part of it. It’s like, if it’s not a slugfest, it’s not a fight. And that’s not always true in MMA.”

Call it the plague of social media, but Harris also has noticed something about the pattern of hate. It’s largely anonymous. When a name is attached, the criticism is muted, if not absent.

“The funny thing about the haters is, it’s easy to hate on Twitter,” he said. “It’s easy to hate on [The Underground] because you’re hiding behind a screen name. Nobody hates on Facebook.”

So Harris has cultivated a mindset in relation to social media, like many of the fighters who have a Twitter account (and are encouraged to have one by their employers): As long as they’re talking, let them talk. Interestingly enough, the haters are the ones who seem to know the most about his career.

“They tell you you suck and they hate watching your fights, but they know your whole life,” he said.

At the same time, it gets tiring. Harris is no longer a UFC fighter; he’s below the popular radar and far more exposed to hardcore fans, who tend to be the most critical of just about everything that goes on in MMA. And while message boards represent a small fraction of the sport’s audience, they have the loudest voice, which is where the sport lives and breathes.

Sometimes, Harris gets the urge to vent, which brings him to one Internet radio show.

“This is the thing that I’m going to warn them about,” he said. “If you are actually a fan of somebody, (and) if you want to keep this relationship with MMA to where you can actually walk up to a guy and speak to him or talk to him on Twitter – I answer Facebook notes, (and) I talk to the fans, guys that are [fighting] – they’re going to lose that if they keep hating so hard.

“I almost turned my Twitter off at one point. (Muhammed) ‘King Mo’ Lawal turned his off and then turned it on again.

“Think about the UFC fights. People know where the hotel is. They’re waiting in the lobby taking pictures. They’re going to lose that if they keep being so threatening. There are people out there saying, ‘When I see you, I’m going to fight you.’ That’s not legal. Don’t do that.”

Harris said he’s gone clubbing with fans and invited them to train at his gym. There are several positive interactions that have come as the result of interactions on social media. It’s the accompanying noise that spoils it for the good ones.

Ultimately, though, there’s nothing he can do about that. If he’s going to stick around on the web, he better be ready to accept the good with the bad.

“There’s some people where no matter what you do, you can’t please some people,” Harris said. “I don’t aim to please anybody or entertain. I go out there to do my thing, and if entertaining thing happen, then so be it.”